Man Stabbed Outside Marcus Garvey Park, Fourth Victim in Three Weeks Updated June 13, 2010 9:56am

The scene of the stabbing at Marcus Garvey Park on 121st Street and Madison Avenue. (DNAinfo/Ben Fractenberg)

By Ben Fractenberg and Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo Staff

HARLEM — A man was stabbed in the chest in a brazen midday attack on Friday just weeks after a bloody triple-stabbing occurred only blocks away, police said.

The 38-year-old was stabbed once by another man about 2 p.m. near the southeast corner of Marcus Garvey Park, at Madison Avenue and 120th Street, the NYPD said.

The victim was taken across the street to North General Hospital and was in stable condition, police said.

Police described the attacker as in his 20s, with blond hair and blue eyes.

“Wow, in broad daylight,” said a shocked Maya Ife, 34, of East Harlem, who heard about the near-fatal incident from police at the scene.

“The neighborhood’s changing, it’s getting better. But there’s a push-pull, as this incident shows you,” she said.

In the early morning of May 26, three men were stabbed in a string of apparently random attacks by an unknown assailant near the park’s southern entrance and next to the subway station at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, police said.

Police would not speculate on whether the incidents were related, but descriptions of the two suspects differed.

An investigation into all the incidents is ongoing, the NYPD noted.

The attacker in last month’s stabbings used what appeared to be a military-style knife, a police officer at the scene said at the time. Officers chased him into the park, but he got away.

The area around the 4, 5, 6 subway station at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue often teems with commuters, shoppers and businesspeople, but drug dealers and emotionally unstable people also populate the corner, locals said.

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By Patrick Hedlund, DNAinfo.com

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